The Showerless Saga
It began, as all great trials do, with optimism and a box labeled “Essentials” that contained neither towels nor emotional resilience. I had just moved into a brand new place—with walls (always a plus), freshly painted, floors still negotiating their relationship with gravity, and a hot water system (HWS) that promptly staged a dramatic protest.
🧊 Day 1–3: The Cold Awakening
The HWS refused to function. I endured the first few days sustained only by clean thoughts, virtual sponge baths, and the faint hope that plumbing might one day align with destiny. Claude, my cat and domestic overlord, watched me attempt kettle-assisted hygiene with the same expression he reserves for moths and poor life choices. I called the Department of Housing (DOH), hoping for divine intervention or at least a callback.
🔧 Day 4: The Electrician’s Triumph and the Vanishing Steam
The electrician turned up, armed with tools, quiet confidence, and what I can only assume was a virtual plumbing certificate. After some fiddling with the t-shaped plumbing valve thingy, he managed to summon hot water to the premises for the very first time. I stood in awe. Claude blinked once, which I took as a sign of cautious optimism.
I prepared for a long-awaited shower—towel ready, playlist queued, emotional closure within reach. But when I turned the tap… nothing. No water. The warmth had vanished, leaving behind only betrayal and a damp sense of irony. I called the Department of Housing again. The plot thickens.
📞 Day 5–6: Bureaucratic Crescendo
The electrician returned once more. This time, he took photos of the valve thingy, made a series of phone calls, and left behind a trail of snipped cable ties and damp philosophical questions. The Department of Housing entered the chat, intervening multiple times with escalating urgency. Each call added a new layer to the saga, like sedimentary paperwork forming a bureaucratic fossil record.
🕕 Day 7: The Prophecy Fulfilled
Friday at 6pm, after hours, the plumber arrived—summoned by the gods of escalation. He examined the valve, nodded with quiet authority, and inverted the thingy. No fanfare. No incantations. Just a single, decisive twist. Hot water flowed!
I wept. Claude, perched atop a unlabeled box of power cables, looked on like a furry foreman, silently judging the entire process. He remained unimpressed.
Thus ends the Showerless Saga. I am now emotionally powered by steam, passive-aggressive labeling, and the faint hum of a newly appeased hot water system.
Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and metadata tinkerer. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and poetic nonsense. He believes in satire’s transformative power, the elegance of expressive metadata, and recursion—once writing a poem that never ended and a script that crashed browsers.
